Counseling Course Descriptions (MAC)
PTC 151: Dynamics of Biblical Change
This course is a foundational counseling course that introduces the key framework and themes related to the wisdom and practice of biblical counseling. The way that you counsel other people is determined by how you understand God, yourself, other people, life’s pressures, and change. This course addresses the depth, breadth, and balance of your under-standing. How does Christ’s past grace, present grace, and future grace speak to our hearts and change how we live our daily lives? This course is about people. It is about how we face the troubles of life. It is about how we deal with our inner struggles. It is about how we change into Jesus’ image. Through case studies, class lectures, assigned readings, and Scripture, you’ll explore these practical questions. Self counseling projects will help you to make first-hand, practical application of the concepts learned in class.
PTC 178: Helping Relationships
Let’s say you have a basic and growing understanding of biblical counseling. You know the key ideas and have been able to apply them to yourself. Now comes the hard part: How do you apply this understanding in your everyday relationships? This course will take the content you already know and get specific about how you can actually deliver the content. Case studies, lectures, and group discussions will help you grow in your ability to listen well, know people, interpret another person’s story from a biblical perspective, and offer biblically-based truth that will motivate others in their growth in Christ.
PTC 222: Counseling and Physiology
Corequisite: PTC 151 Dynamics of Biblical Change AND PTC 178 Helping Relationships
In this class you will look at issues such as traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, OCD, bipolar disorder, and other problems that require discernment of physical and spiritual components of the struggle. You will also gain an understanding of the role of psychoactive medications and psychiatry in caring for others. Through lectures, group discussion, and case studies you’ll learn how to wisely help those who struggle with problems in which both attention to physical and spiritual aspects are paramount.
PTC 243: Theology and Secular Psychology
Corequisite: PTC 151 Dynamics of Biblical Change AND PTC 178 Helping Relationships
This course aims to show how Christian faith meaningfully engages a body of thoughts and practices connected to the discipline of psychology. It will consider how biblical counseling fits in our cultural context and will develop students’ skills in both critical thinking and biblical reinterpretation.
PTC 251: Marriage Counseling
Corequisite: PTC 151 Dynamics of Biblical Change AND PTC 178 Helping Relationships
This course introduces Marriage Counseling and its complex, dynamic, and sometimes volatile form of counseling. This course will provide you with a basic theological framework and methodology for counseling that will help move couples beyond complaints to address dynamics and patterns that keep problems in place, dynamics that are rooted in couples’ motives, desires, and relationship with God.
PTC 261: Applied Theology of the Person
This course aims to draw out answers about who we are and how we care for others from Scripture in such a way that we know God better, know ourselves better, and are led into faith and love. The course will consider non-Christian counseling case studies as a way to demonstrate careful engagement as well as Scripture’s breadth and depth.
PTC 301: Everyday Problems in Counseling
This course considers more than ten everyday problems that people face in a fallen world, such as suffering, shame, conflict, and anger. With each problem, we will consider how the Bible conceptualizes the experience and how it leads us to help others to persevere through problems with the goal that their faith expresses itself through love (Gal 5:6).
PTC 372: Counseling Observation
Corequisite: PTC 151 Dynamics of Biblical Change AND PTC 178 Helping Relationships
Counseling Observation provides students with a “real-life” demonstration of how the biblical counseling methodologies explored in other counseling classes are applied in the counseling room. Each observation class is unique, as the observation experience will vary based upon the particular counselor and the counselee’s particular problem and circumstances. Students will quickly see that biblical counseling is highly relational, not wooden or formulaic; there is no “one size fits all” approach.
PTC 394: Complex Problems in Counseling
Prerequisite: PTC 151 Dynamics of Biblical Change AND PTC 178 Helping Relationships AND PTC 243 Theology and Secular Psychology AND PTC 301 Everyday Problems in Counseling AND PTC 222 Counseling and Physiology
This course will bring the lens of Scripture and hope of God’s redemptive perspective to complex problems of human suffering and sin. We will explore topics with a careful nuance that seeks to truly understand the experience of what it is like to live as an embodied soul who wrestles with deep distress, profound brokenness, or an entrenched sin pattern with the hope of meeting strugglers with compassion, grace, and biblical truth.
PTC 523: Counseling in the Local Church
Corequisite: PTC 151 Dynamics of Biblical Change AND PTC 178 Helping Relationships
This course seeks to survey the spectrum of interpersonal ministry that exists in the local church, recognizing both public and private ministries of the Word for the whole church as a ministering community. Students will learn to assess a church’s culture, especially the ways this helps or hinders congregational care. Students will consider this through examining both informal relational care and the structures of the church where congregational care occurs (e.g., church discipline, small groups, lay counseling). Topics discussed will include avoiding pitfalls (e.g., crises, burnout) and to leveraging opportunities (e.g.,small group, hospital visitation) in congregational care. Students will study contextual dynamics of a local church that help or hinder thriving congregational care and create a plan to strengthen current congregational care provisions in local church settings.
PTC 621: Ethics in Biblical Counseling
Corequisite: PTC 151 Dynamics of Biblical Change AND PTC 178 Helping Relationships
In Ethics of Biblical Counseling, students will develop a biblical-theological framework to navigate and evaluate the ethics of biblical counseling. Students will be equipped to assess situations related to their context, calling, and counseling relationships in a biblical, ethical manner. A framework will be offered to help students evaluate various ethical dilemmas and come to decisions that ultimately glorify the Lord and edify the body.
PTC 691: Culminating Seminar
Prerequisite: PTC 151 Dynamics of Biblical Change AND PTC 178 Helping Relationships AND PTC 261 Applied Theology of the Person AND PTC 301 Everyday Problems in Counseling AND PTC 222 Counseling and Physiology AND PTC 372 Counseling Observation AND NT 143 New Testament Theology for Application OR OT 141 Old Testament Theology for Application AND the completion of your 100 hours of Counseling Field Experience
Corequisite: PTC 621 Ethics in Biblical Counseling
The three-credit Culminating Seminar course will require you to synthesize and practice the skills and models taught in your courses. During the course, you will reflect on what you have learned about counseling and about yourself as a counselor throughout the curriculum. You will be grouped into cohorts of 5-6 other students and work directly with CCEF faculty for the duration of the 10-week course in live, synchronous settings. Upon completion of the course, you should be able to apply your knowledge of biblical counseling to Christian practice in a real world Church or parachurch context; receive, provide and implement counseling feedback in a humble, discerning way; and identify your most significant areas of opportunity for growth in counseling ministry.
MAC Practicum Experience Course
This 1-credit course is designed to accompany two components of your practicum experience: Program mentorship and counseling field experience. There are no assigned lectures or readings associated with this course. The four assignments that comprise the course content are to be completed at various points throughout the MAC degree: Two self-assessments and two brief reflection papers. Credit for the course is awarded after successful completion of the assignments.